[Advaita-l] Aham brahmasmi

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Tue, 8 Dec 2009, sivasenani at yahoo.com wrote:

> 'Myself' is an extraneous term, not found in the mahavakya. Asmi is 
> exactly the equivalent of 'am' in 'I am Brahman' and 'is' in 'Brahman is 
> I'.
>

You could just as grammatically say aham brahmam (or brahmo'ham) and get 
the meaning "I am Brahman".  The translation of the particular 
construction in Sanskrit is helped by the addtional word "myself" because 
English has largely lost it.  But in e.g. French you could say "Je me suis 
Brahman" to get an accurate translation.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>